Word: legalism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...conventional wisdom of some in the Washington legal community, the move bordered on bullying, overly aggressive and right on the edge of prosecutorial ethics. Clinton over the years has shown a great capacity for self-pity, but in this sense it is partly deserved: no ordinary citizen would face Clinton's present excruciating legal bind. No ordinary errant male would face a special prosecutor with four years of relatively slim results and an ever expanding mandate to search for potential illegality. No regular prosecutor could spend unlimited resources prosecuting perjury in a civil deposition about a sexual matter...
...legal rights are for ordinary folks, not the man elevated to the office that transmutes a lifetime of ambition, dealmaking and supercharged hormones into a symbol of dignity, power and promise to serve the greater good. Starr felt he had an obligation to seek the President's testimony before sending his report to Congress, and he was convinced that Clinton would not be able to hide behind the Presidential Seal. As a former White House official says, "the worst thing he could do is start using the constitutional powers of the presidency to protect himself...
...much for Monica's day in court. Now, what did she reveal? Exactly what was expected of her -- and, as TIME Daily reported back in January, exactly what she told Linda Tripp -- according to legal sources quoted across the board Friday: That she and President Clinton had sexual relations more than a dozen times in his small private study down the hallway from the Oval Office. That Clinton did not consider what they were doing to be sex, allowing for deniability. That, in the normal manner of an affair, they discussed concealing the relationship -- but that Clinton never told Lewinsky...
...find out much earlier -- in advance of Clinton's August 17 testimony, in fact. Will Lewinsky lawyer Plato Cacheris spill the beans to his tennis partner, Clinton attorney Bob Bennett? According to TIME Washington correspondent Michael Weisskopf, this is one set of secrets that won't spread along the legal grapevine. "In this case, there's not a lot of motivation for the defense to talk," says Weisskopf -- since if the President found out, it might allow him to undermine Monica. Of course, he could always try reading the newspapers...
...saliva, but more likely he'd have to serve a subpoena of sorts at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where the leader of the free world gets his physicals. Past behavior hardly suggests that the presidential genetic blueprint will be offered up without a fight. Get ready for the next big legal battle: Bodily-fluid privilege...